Pet Battle System now on Beta Realms (Early Version)
This build of the beta introduced a very early version of the Pet Battle System!

I want to be the very best!
Picking up Pet Battle Training on the beta is pretty easy, all you need to do is visit the trainer in your capital city and pick up the 2 abilities.

Update - Almost forgot about those, added something about the Pet Battle Masters.

Tracking Pets
The pet tracking changed slightly since our first preview, you now track 2 types of pets: the ones that you can't capture and are only here to let you gain XPs will show up as a small yellow dot on your map. The ones you can actually capture will show up with an easily noticeable green icon and will be flagged as capturable in their tooltip.

Fight!
The fight is started by right clicking a pet creature when you're in range (approximately 30 yards). The camera will rotate around your character and the game will switch to Pet Battle mode. From this screen you can:

See the status of all your pets at the top left of your screen.

Control the abilities of your active pet at the bottom.

Switch between pets and see them by clicking the 4th icon on the bar.

Capture pets when they're low on life!

You can also surrender but that sounds pretty wimpy to be honest.

The battle is pretty simple, weaknesses and strengths are already implemented and if you pick the wrong type of pet you will get your ass kicked pretty fast. It ends whenever the enemy is defeated or captured.

Pet Battle Interface

Attacking!

Selecting another pet

New pet on the field!

Let's try to capture ...

Gotcha!

Pet Battle Masters
The Pet Battle System will also have fights against NPCs, some of the achievements datamined last night point to "Pet Battle Masters" that you have to defeat on every continent.

Finding New Pets
How are you going to know where to find new pets for your collection? Easy, Blizzard is going to integrate a full encyclopedia directly in the game. Maps aren't implemented yet but currently, the info page of any pet will already tell you where you can find it!

Pet Family Passive Bonuses
Newly added are passive bonuses for all pet families.

Aquatic - Purity - The duration of harmful damage over time effects is reduced on Aquatic pets.

Beast - Enrage - Beasts deal 25% extra damage below half health.

Critter - Elusive - Critters break out of crowd control effects more quickly.

Humanoid - Recovery - Humanoids recover 2% of their maximum health every time they attack.

Magic - Spellshield - Magic pets cannot be dealt more than 50% of their maximum health in one attack.

Mechanical - Comes back to life once per battle, returning to 25% health.

Undead - Damned - Undead pets return to life for one round when killed.

Pet Battle Abilities
If you missed the update last week, check out the updated list of pet battle abilities on WoWDB!

The tooltips for individualabilities will show you which pets the attack is strong against, and which pets the attack is weak against. The page will also show you which pets can learn the abilities. On each pet's page, we have listed all of the spells that the pet can learn. We will continue to add features as the system is fully implemented in the beta.

raiding, pvp, dungeons, pet battles, tillers, challenge modes, scenarios and possibly racing in one MMORPG!? oh yeah no one will pay for that /sarcasm. the game is getting bigger and better now with this expansion. Blizzard can see now that players want variety instead of just more raids/dungeons/arena/battlegrounds.

---------- Post added 2012-04-26 at 05:46 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Rogge

Pet battles, the least interesting thing introduced to world of warcraft since that ingame voice thing.

a shitload of people hanging around goldshire etc. in the last patch would disagree strongly.

---------- Post added 2012-04-26 at 05:49 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Gotjuice

I hate it, this is Pokemon and I don't like that shit. I'm a grown ass dude...

Hopefully they won't make me do this crap. It would really piss me off if they linked some kind of powerful gear/trinket to this crap.

Personally im not really ecxited about his feature at all. But some others can find that funny, and im sure i will do some battles waiting for raids or when im just logged in doing nothing better than swimming endlessly in SW canals. Thats a nice addition imo, if you dont like it, well, dont use it? Why complain about that since its only meant to pass time and have fun... This expention was already bashed before it was even first announced at Blizzcon, thats stupid... I've been in the beta, the new talent system is really great, especially in pvp where you wont be able to know exactly who you are facing. Its not perfect i know theres some flaws like everything else i guess... The zones graphics.... OMG, they're really nice looking! I didnt try to level yet i dont have time for it atm =/ but i cant wait to level my main in there! Stop bashing on MOP thats gonna be a great expantion if you stop complaining at everthing blizzard announce.

pet battles don't pigeon hole you into a specific area then send you to another and another and so on... with pet battles you go where there's a pet you want, an npc you want to challenge or just a zone you like the look of to battle in with wild pets.

Yes, what could the UI team have made instead...
Hm..
Can't come up with anything really

Do you honestly believe that just the UI team had a hand in this?

One of the reason's people are pissed at this is because we've had to listen to Blizzard, a multi-billion dollar company cry about "lack of resources" in regards to other aspects of the game. If you can't see the hypocrisy in spending time on this while at the same time they blubber about "lack of resources" well then you've swallowed the Kool-aid with so many others.

One of the reason's people are pissed at this is because we've had to listen to Blizzard, a multi-billion dollar company cry about "lack of resources" in regards to other aspects of the game. If you can't see the hypocrisy in spending time on this while at the same time they blubber about "lack of resources" well then you've swallowed the Kool-aid with so many others.

they have a team just for pet battles, it has been stated by blizzard themselves somewhere I'm sure..

One of the reason's people are pissed at this is because we've had to listen to Blizzard, a multi-billion dollar company cry about "lack of resources" in regards to other aspects of the game. If you can't see the hypocrisy in spending time on this while at the same time they blubber about "lack of resources" well then you've swallowed the Kool-aid with so many others.

Welcome back when you have any idea how Blizzard's WoW team spends their resources.
Until then your whining is not welcome anywhere. Maybe you could be constructive? Aw, too much to ask.

Pet battles will make a huge part of the community leave the cities.
That's what we wanted
That's what they wanted
That's what we're getting.

So World of Warcraft appears to becoming a mini arcade game system. We have Joust, Plants versus Zombies and now Pokemon. Any chance of some classics like Space Invaders, Ghost and Goblins or maybe Donkey Kong?

I think Donkey Kong could be done so easily. We have the Gorillas in the game and they could maybe throw oil barrels from a Oil Station that the Goblins owned in Stranglethorn Vale. Or maybe they could use that big Ape across on that island near Booty Bay with Princess Puba. See!! it's already half there

I love it. I can already see myself spending alot of time hunting down every single elusive new companion pet.

I also love all of the "waste of resources" and "no one asked for this" people. If Blizzard only made things people asked for, WoW would not even exist. You really think there were loads of War3 players saying they wanted a Warcraft MMO? Highly doubt it. Good game companies are good because they try new things. They take chances. The companion pet battles are a gamble. Either it will be a big hit and many players will take advantage and enjoy it like Transmog and LFR or it will fall flat and be mostly ignored like Archeology. The important thing is that Blizzard is trying new things to keep the game exciting. If they would have stuck with the same game design as they had when the game launched and it was just leveling, 5 man instances, and 40 people raids there is no way it would still be this popular after 7 years.

So you don't have any interest in the pet battles and know you wont get any enjoyment out of it. That's fine, don't bother with them. I personally have no interest in Arenas and only a slight interest in pvp as a whole. That does not make them a waste of time. If even a small percent of the player base has fun with it, it is not a waste. To say that Blizzard should not add anything that you, personally do not like is pretty damn selfish.

So World of Warcraft appears to becoming a mini arcade game system. We have Joust, Plants versus Zombies and now Pokemon. Any chance of some classics like Space Invaders, Ghost and Goblins or maybe Donkey Kong?

I think Donkey Kong could be done so easily. We have the Gorillas in the game and they could maybe throw oil barrels from a Oil Station that the Goblins owned in Stranglethorn Vale. Or maybe they could use that big Ape across on that island near Booty Bay with Princess Puba. See!! it's already half there

I've always loved mini-games, i used to sit down for full days on FFX and just play blitzball it was so epic!

I'm not going to comment on Pokemon-WoW, because Pokemon is actually an amazing game with a lot of depth if you actually give it a chance (it actually makes more improvements on game mechanics alone across versions than most games.), but I am pretty scared at the thought of the company wasting additional resources balancing pet battles when it can't even get PvE and PvP right at the moment.

I'm not going to comment on Pokemon-WoW, because Pokemon is actually an amazing game with a lot of depth if you actually give it a chance (it actually makes more improvements on game mechanics alone across versions than most games.), but I am pretty scared at the thought of the company wasting additional resources balancing pet battles when it can't even get PvE and PvP right at the moment.

Both PvE and PvP is more balanced that it has ever been. But of course it's easier to just yell about how "now" is bad and "old" was good

Also, I doubt they'll spend a lot of time balancing pet battles, it's not like there will be rated Pet Arenas. There's not enough depth

Both PvE and PvP is more balanced that it has ever been. But of course it's easier to just yell about how "now" is bad and "old" was good

Also, I doubt they'll spend a lot of time balancing pet battles, it's not like there will be rated Pet Arenas. There's not enough depth

not enough depth with ten thousand plus different team variations? if there's 300 pets and each pet can be placed in a team with any other 2 pets from a pool of 300 and then take into account family types and different abilities for pretty much all pets and you get some serious depth :P

some of the ability types includes:

direct damage attacks
multiple attacks with a chance to hit on each attack
delayed damage attacks
weather effects
Heals over time effects
Damage over time effects
Debuffs
Buffs
Ejects

One of the reason's people are pissed at this is because we've had to listen to Blizzard, a multi-billion dollar company cry about "lack of resources" in regards to other aspects of the game. If you can't see the hypocrisy in spending time on this while at the same time they blubber about "lack of resources" well then you've swallowed the Kool-aid with so many others.

We get it. You don't like the feature so you're pissed Blizzard spent time on this instead of on your own items that you want.

Just like people who don't like transmog complained about Blizzard wasting resources on that instead of whatever they wanted more.

Just like people who hate LFR complained that Blizzard spent time on that instead of making new raids.

Just like people complain about Blizzard adding something nifty to the default UI instead of just letting mod writers handle it.

When new player models come out, some people will complain that Blizzard wasted resources on that instead of doing something else.

When the dance studio comes out, some people will complain that Blizzard wasted resources on that instead of doing something else.

Every single new feature Blizzard has ever introduced or will introduce in the future results in people complaining on the boards.